THOUSANDS took to Valencia City’s streets on Saturday to demand the resignation of president Carlos Mazon for his handling of the October 29 floods when 229 people died.
It was the twelfth in a series of anti-Mazon protests which took place four days before the anniversary of the disaster- to avoid clashing with the official state memorial service in the city.
The demonstration came as the findings of an opinion poll showed that three-quarters of Valencia region residents wanted the president to quit.
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Over 50,000 people took part in Saturday’s protest according to the Government Delegation, while the Valencia Policia Local issued a lower estimation of 32,000 participants.
Chants of ‘Mazon resign’ echoed across the route taken by protestors which snaked for around two hours from the Plaza de San Agustín to the Plaza de la Virgen.
Other vocal refrains included ‘Mazon to prison’ and ‘We do not want him at the state memorial service’
Families of the victims led the protest, accompanied by a Valencia firefighter and a worker from the 112 emergency telephone service to show the support of these groups to those affected by the disaster and who assured that they will be with them ‘as many times as necessary’.
Relatives carried photos of their loved ones and banners demanding justice, dressed in T-shirts with phrases such as ’20:11 Ni oblit ni perdo’- referring to the time an emergency alert was sent to mobile phones on October 29- long after many people had died.
As the marchers passed, they were applauded by people lining the pavements.
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The president of the Association of Fatal Victims of the Dana, Rosa Alvarez, said that ‘it is brutal’ that a year on, they are still ‘in the same position’.
She stressed that they are not only asking for Mazon’s resignation who ‘abandoned’ his people and ‘continues to be expendable’, but also that he is brought to justice.
Alvarez said that for families of victims, ‘there is a lot of pain and a lot of anger’, which leads them to fight, and assured that ‘almost no one’ has been able to start mourning-
The support gives them ‘some meaning to continue to get up very day’, and she ended her speech with the phrase: ‘They are not dead, they are killed”, which was then chanted by the crowd.
The president of the Associacio de Víctimes de la Dana, Marilo Gradoli, said they continue to ‘demand truth, justice and reparation’ because ‘political responsibilities have not yet been assumed’.
He added that they have only got ‘lies’ from the Valencian government for months but no ‘trace of solidarity and empathy’ towards the victims and those affected.
Toñi Garcia, who lost her husband and daughter on October 29, said that it was ‘unacceptable’ that Carlos Mazon remains as president because he ‘has shown that he has not been up to the task’.
A judge is currently investigating whether there is any criminal responsibility behind the handling of last year’s disaster.
Meanwhile an opinion poll published on Monday, shows that the views of the protestors are very much in line with Valencian residents.
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A survey carried out by GAD-3 for the ABC and Las Provincias newspapers showed that 75% of Valencians believe that Mazon resign over his management of the DANA.
65% of those questioned also believe that he should call early regional elections- the next are scheduled for May 2027.
The poll was carried out between the October 12 and October 22 in the Valencian Community via 1,013 interviews.
Only 22% of those surveyed are of the view that Mazon should stay, and only 13% backed him standing again for the Partido Popular(PP)
61% of those who voted for Mazon in May 2023 believe that he should resign and just a paltry 15% of PP voters think he should try to get re-elected.
The weekend saw a spat between Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, and Carlos Mazon over the handling of last year’s disaster- and who’s to blame.
At a PSOE socialist conference in Leon, Sanchez said that a year ago the ‘negligence of one caused a real tragedy’.
He added that Mazon was continuing in his position because he was propped up by his ‘political boss’, the PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijoo, and his main parliamentary backer, the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal.
Sanchez described as ‘indecent for Valencians and for the relatives of the victims’ the support that Feijoo and Abascal continue to provide to Mazon.
He said that Mazon’s management was the same as other regional PP leaders based on the same pattern of ‘cuts, mismanagement and lies’.
“First what they do is cut public services, secondly, what they do is mismanagement and thirdly, they lie to try to cover up their incompetence and negligence”, Sanchez proclaimed.
Carlos Mazon responded via social media saying that “the indecent thing is to try to take political advantage of the pain and tragedy, to cover up the corruption scandals that surround him”.
Mazon continued: “His attacks only highlight the fatal errors of the water distributor, the Jucar Hydrographic Confederation and the State Meteorological Agency, which have been accredited and depend on the Government of Spain”.
“The miserable thing is not to give aid to 34,000 families affected by the flood as you do, and the abject thing is to say that ‘if they need help, they should ask for it'”.
Mazon also pointed out that Sanchez ‘has no longer any excuses for not collaborating in the reconstruction, as we have asked him on many occasions’.
He concluded: “He no longer has excuses to continue with the abandonment to which he has subjected the Valencians.”
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